They should put an epilepsy warning in this video. Bombing the viewer with one second sequences of random films for the entire video is really annoying
I believe it may partly be to avoid copyright strikes.
Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
41–50 of 414 posts
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#42Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…
I'm guessing you're using a stereo setup then, dialogue is usually mixed into the centre channel, downmixing a 5.1 or 7.1 stream to stereo will produce those results. even worse is if you don't downmix to stereo, and all you are hearing is front left and right, which is often just the reverb effect channels for dialogue
Don't many people have just a stereo setup still (myself included)? Why would a newer standard be backwards-hostile like that?
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#43This just doesn't ring true to me, at all. Is the Youtube algorithm directing people to make vaguely fascist feeling, "bring back the good old days", 'kids today', 'civilization is doomed' content aimed at young males? Or is that just a natural cycle that repeats throughout history? The biggest film in history was "Birth of a Nation" until it was replaced by "Gone with the Wind", "Star Wars" may have been a rebellion…
Nostalgia that is the most natural thing in the world is defined as 'fascist' now?
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills by accident. Even karate kid which shown some training, shown imaginary low effort low time investment training. The typical action movie of my youth had guys winning all the fights for no reason other then that they are awesome. Audiences loved it. The past movies had enough of pure power fantasy or other "just gonna win" in it for the whole generation to drawn…
> Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills by accident And half the plot is typically devoted to if they want to accept their new found powers or ignore them to live a normal life. So its still quite devoted to a choice with life changing consequences.
> And half the plot is typically devoted to if they want to accept their new found powers or ignore them to live a normal life. So its still quite devoted to a choice with life changing consequences.
There is no way for Hulk to ignore or reject the powers. Nor for superman or spiderman for that matter. Superman in particular is just born that way, full stop. And speaking about action movies that nope, no big deep choices there. Even in matrix, the choice is singular scene where main character picks the pill so that movie can happen.
And I liked Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill movies, so I have seen them multiple times and consequences for choices and actions are not the theme there at all.
I have also read Spiderman comic targeted at kids back then. Half the time he just reacts to what is going on around, not having much choice nor choice being theme beyond "Am I going to do the right thing or not" false choice. Ninja Turtles had training in them ... but also they are essentially magical turtles due to some experiments or what done on them.
Average movie and entertainment in 90ties just was not that deep.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#45I'd rather announce the end of American cinematography. It's entirely product placement pulp, preceded by numerous ads when displayed in cinema or the internet, and any form of sharing them on the internet oftentimes implies a vicious strike of copyright predators. Shut down this industry already.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#46I disagree that one learns anything important from a (non-documentary) movie. Movies are an experiential but non-interactive art form that resists internalisation. At best they make you feel a certain way for a short while, in my experience.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing you're using a stereo setup then, dialogue is usually mixed into the centre channel, downmixing a 5.1 or 7.1 stream to stereo will produce those results. even worse is if you don't downmix to stereo, and all you are hearing is front left and right, which is often just the reverb effect channels for dialogue
Don't many people have just a stereo setup still (myself included)? Why would a newer standard be backwards-hostile like that?
As a counterpoint, I have both 5.1 via ARC and Dolby Atmos system hooked up via eARC and dialogue is still quiet in some modern releases. Older movies sound great though.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#48I think I agree with the thrust of the video. My caveats would be:
1) When anybody dunks on "modern movies", they mean "modern movies with $>100m marketing budgets". Which is actually a small minority of modern movies.
2) The messaging has changed, but movies have always had terrible messaging in them.
Edit: Maybe it's a bad idea to say this out loud, but when you get protagonists who are "just born preternaturally awesome", they're generally female, right? I'm not sure the same trend applies for male protagonists.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#49I think the video doesn't go deep enough: the problem is not that movies teach the wrong lessons, but rather that the movies are so hyper-optimized for engagement and ROI that there's no room for nuance. He may not like the newest Star Wars trilogy, but it nonetheless made a lot of money. That said, I think the author (and also me in the previous paragraph) uses the term "movies" to refer to "big budget movies", whic…
And don't forget that they are also optimized to the lowest common denominator of American and Chinese sensitivities.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#50Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…
The “let’s turn luminosity to 0 to drive up the sale of screens with 5000000:1 contrast” got me as much as “let’s make the sound inaudible on stereo to drive up the sale of 7.1 sound systems.” VLC should have a setting such as “flatten sound to 70dB all the time and luminosity to 50% the ability of the display in average”. Even pirated packs are becoming unwatchable.
> The “let’s turn luminosity to 0 to drive up the sale of screens with 5000000:1 contrast.
Pitch Meeting recently gave up the game there.
(in the latest video, Ryan jokes that they're making the screen darker and darker until they don't even have to project a video and can just play an audiobook over the speakers)